


Puzzling (These Days that Bind Us)

by Her_Madjesty



Category: Anastasia - Flaherty/Ahrens/McNally
Genre: Cigarettes, Everyone is connected, Experimental Style, Extended Metaphors, F/M, Gen, Hypothermia, Leningrad and Petersburg are Characters as Much as the Cast, M/M, Mosaic, Personified Cities, Red String of Fate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-11
Updated: 2017-12-11
Packaged: 2019-02-13 11:55:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12983550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Her_Madjesty/pseuds/Her_Madjesty
Summary: The soles of Anya’s boots wear out in the middle of a forest that has no name - or: a prelude in seven parts.





	Puzzling (These Days that Bind Us)

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is based off of a challenge issued by anghraine on Tumblr; it is a Chaucer-form fic, meaning, as listed [here](http://anghraine.tumblr.com/post/145320294168/chaucer-meme), that it consists of seven sections which are seven sentences apiece. 
> 
> That said, this piece is a bit experimental, a bit heavy on metaphors, and a bit jumpy with POV, but I hope the pretentious nature of it and the story at its core - that of four interconnected, broken people - comes through clearly. All in all: cut me some slack; it's finals week; it's 4am. 
> 
> Credit to vampyrekat for Boris and Vadim.
> 
> XOXO

I. Prelude

 

The soles of Anya’s boots wear out in the middle of a forest that has no name. She gasps when the wet cold seeps into her nurse-gifted socks, though the unsettling stick is quickly overwhelmed by a shock of hypothermic pain.

Wolves dance between trunks of birch and pine. Anya envies them for their coats. She forces her knees high and measures every step, counting in her head until the numbers run together, and she has to start again.

Her arrival in Petersburg-turned-Leningrad will be heralded by a shepherd’s grief: when he wakes, on that morning, it will be to his dogs lapping up blood from his flock; to the skeleton of a shattered fence; to a lamb, throat opened, lounging on his door step. It is an eventuality, though he does not know it, brought on bright red feet and the loss of one or two toes.

 

II. Payment

 

Dmitry pays each of the actresses who visit Yusupov Palace, though he hires none of them. Vlad tsks as they watch the last of the flock go, all the while running a hand through his thinning hair. It is a familiar expression; Dmitry bites back a smile at the sight of it, shoving his hands into his pockets, instead, and digging deep in an attempt to ward off the coming cold.

“And what of us?” Vlad asks, though the ribbing is good natured; when he plays at swooning, Dmitry catches him, hands calloused and ready.

“We’ve managed,” Dmitry replies, pushing Vlad upright. His fingers catch on pilling cotton, and an ounce of his good humor curdles. “Besides: if we’re lucky, they’ll be too busy eating to report us.”

 

III. Patriarch

 

A new dusting of snow arrives with twilight. Vaganov watches the fat flakes kiss his office window and cradles his Nagant M1895 in his lap. Impatient fingers break the weapon down into individual pieces; cartridge case, barrel, cylinder. The disassembly distracts from the shuffling outside his door; Boris’s anticipatory muttering: “Is he back - do we take them now – should we wait?”; Vadim’s responding grunts, punctuated by the incessant tapping of his boot.

Vaganov brings a hand to his aching brow, unaware of the gunpowder he leaves in his wake.

The deliberation stops.

The office door swings open, and the line of victims – three women, red cheeked and twittering – tromp into the office to be greeted with a smile Vaganov thinks he’s inherited; bitter, gleaming, full of want-to-be wolf.

 

IV. Phantoms

 

The four of them dance around each other in Leningrad’s square; faces familiar, reflective, nothing in a crowd, while beyond them, the city pulses with wanting. Vlad is the only one of the four to see the red threads that bind them; he caresses the one tied around Dmitry’s wrist identifiable as his and ties it in double knots when the man falls asleep.

It is Leningrad, though, that holds them best; Leningrad _née_ Petersburg _née_ unwanted bride. When they sleep, she fills their dreams with Anastasia, Anastasia – death and a princess covered in lamb’s blood.

Anya’s jaw snaps shut in the dark.

Vlad wakes to find Dmitry pacing.

Vaganov spends nights curled beneath the weight of his name, elbows pressed to his knees as the days grow colder.

 

V. Precious

 

Vlad feels the moment Dmitry meets Anya in the shiver of the bones of his wrists; he feels Anya meet Vaganov like a shot to the back.

Meeting the girl, himself, comes like a kiss to the cheek. This remains when she swears a blue streak through Yusupov Palace; it tingles when Dmitry tries to threaten her with a chair.

“What do you think?” Vlad asks him, once the girl’s fallen asleep atop a pile of rotting coats.

Dmitry doesn’t answer.

“She’s long in the teeth,” Vlad provides - and he knows the purple beneath Dmitry's eyes; knows that the boy is barely with him; knows that the taste of youthful dreams is forever sweeter than this plane - “a bit feral, if you ask me.”

He stops as gunpowder fills his mouth; Vaganov is thinking again; Dmitry’s eyes are narrowing despite his bold heart; beyond them, Anya is reaching out, clutching at shadows from the depths of sleep.

 

VI. Prophets

 

And he sees the threads, but not the could-be’s: a train with monsters, nights in Paris, nostalgia borne over water. These belong to Vaganov – or, rather, Gleb – who cradles his gun beneath his desk; these belong to Dmitry, buying train tickets with a diamond cutting into his fist.

These belong to Anya, who watches men try and circle her; line up to use her; and in the midst of it, she longs for failing shoes and lamb on her tongue.

They’re scared of her – Vlad feels it in each tremble of the threads. Worse of all, she knows it, and she watches them from a distance, eyes old and yellow and as wild as they are noble.

“Who is she?” Vaganov demands in the middle of the night, standing over the Neva like it’s his birthright.

Vlad gathers his cigarette close and smiles at the Bolshevik; his tongue tastes of nicotine, story telling, and the diet of a liar: “I know as much as you do, comrade.”

 

VII. Peregrination

 

Anya – Dmitry – Vaganov – Vlad - dream of Anastasia on their last night in the city; it is a gift, though they do not recognize it as one.

Anya wakes with tears on her cheeks, hands shaking as she reaches out into nothing; it is worse, in many ways, than the woods, because in the woods the wolves would watch her, and she could find their eyes in the dark; in Yusupov there is nothing for the woman she’s become.

Dmitry bites his tongue and tastes blood, in the morning; he watches the sun rise over Petersburg and calls the city by name. She sings back to him: “Anastasia, our Anastasia; deliver our Anastasia.”

Vaganov does not sleep. The cut of morning greets him with refracted Romanov eyes.

Vlad crushes his pack of cigarettes beneath the worn-down heel of his boot and listens to the whistle of a distant train; he plucks at the strings wrapped around his wrist and relishes the way they shiver; lets them settle as morning spills over from night; as Leningrad-the-bride and Petersburg-the-widow stand on their threshold, watching the rise of their children while their children watch back.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I lowkey want to explore whatever binds Dmitry and Vlad together. Yes, I know this story is a bit amorphous.


End file.
